The present invention relates to an image formation process of a silver halide photographic light sensitive material.
Silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials (hereinafter, also denoted simply as photographic materials) are used as a recording material which is simple and low in cost but nonetheless capable of providing high quality images. These materials have greatly contributed to the advancement of industry and culture, and are indispensable material
Silver halide color photographic material such as color negative film, after exposure, is subjected to color development to form yellow (Y), magenta (M) and cyan (C) dye images along with formation of silver images, which is subsequently subjected to bleaching to bleach the silver images to silver halide. The thus formed silver halide becomes a soluble silver complex and is removed from the photographic material. The photographic material is further subjected to a stabilization treatment to wash out any residual fixing agent and to cleanse the photographic material.
In the universally employed processing for color negative film (e.g., Process C-41 or Process C-41RA, produced by Eastman Kodak Co.), the foregoing four processing steps (i.e., color developing, bleaching, fixing and stabilizing) are needed and controls thereof complex and a plenty of time is taken to dissolve processing chemicals. In case when processing a photographic material with immersing it into sufficient amounts of processing solutions used for photographic materials (hereinafter, also denoted simply as processing solutions) contained in processing tanks such as developer tank, bleach tank and fixer tank, while transporting the photographic material through a roller transport mechanism or hanger transport mechanism, processing the photographic material consumes effective ingredients coating roller. As a result of study of this proposal, contained in the processing solutions of the processing tanks, resulting in exhausted processing solutions. In addition thereto, for example, alkaline developer solution absorbs carbon dioxide gas in the air with time and the resulting neutralization reaction lowers alkalinity of the developer solution or aerial oxidation results in exhaustion of the solution with time. Recently, on-site processing, so-called mini-lab has increased to enhance convenience of color film processing, for which a compact and rapid-accessible photographic processing system is desired, which can be handled even by a non-specialist or a part-time worker and is simple, safe and friendly to the environment.
Accordingly, to reduce load of the foregoing process, for example, a technique was proposed in JP-A No. 3-59655 (hereinafter, the term, JP-A refers to an unexamined and published Japanese Patent Application), in which a coating roller is arranged on the way of transporting a photographic material, a supplying roller to supply a processing solution to the photographic material, a processing solution sump is provided between the coating roller and supplying roller so that the processing solution is supplied to the imaging side of the photographic material with coating by rotating the coating roller. As a result of study of this proposal, however, it was proved that such processing often caused unevenness in coating and also produced problems in reproducibility of processing.
Nowadays, in the so-called-digitization age, it is common that image information is optically read out from n photographed and processed film to form images, using an image sensor such as film scanner, converted to electric signals and digitized, thereby, the image information can be stocked as signals and subjected to computer processing to obtain dye images using a photo-copy or a hard copy. In such an imaging process is generally performed an image input by using a digital camera provided with a solid-state image sensor as well as conventional silver salt photographic films (such as color negative film). However, high quality images cannot be obtained by low-priced digital cameras which are relatively low in pixel density and narrow in dynamic range and which is very much expensive relative to a conventional lens-fitted film. On the other hand, the process of reading image information after subjecting a photographic material to a simple processing inherently has the foregoing problems involved in photographic processing and is also not a satisfactory one.
In view of the foregoing, it is a first object of the invention to provide an image formation process, which is low in hazardousness, improved in handling ability, simple and low-priced.
It is a second object of the invention to provide an image formation process, which is capable of promptly taking dye image information as digital information and at a low cost from a universally employed color negative film.
The above objects of the invention can be accomplished by the following constitution:
1. An image formation process of a silver halide color photographic light sensitive material comprising a support having thereon at least one silver halide emulsion layer,
the process comprising the steps of:
(a) exposing the photographic material to light, and
(b) coating a processing solution containing a color developing agent onto the exposed photographic material in a coating section to perform development, while supplying the processing solution to the coating section,
wherein the processing solution has a viscosity of 10.1 to 15000 centi-poise (cp) at 25xc2x0 C. and the processing solution being supplied to the coating section at a supplying rate of 0.002 to 2.0 ml/sec;
2. An image formation process of a silver halide color photographic light sensitive material comprising a support having thereon at least one silver halide emulsion layer,
the process comprising the steps of:
(a) exposing the photographic material to light,
(b) coating a processing solution containing a color developing agent onto the emulsion layer side of the exposed photographic material in a coating section to perform development, while supplying the processing solution to the coating section, and
(c) reading image information from the developed photographic material by an image sensor to transform the read image information into digital image information,
wherein the processing solution has a viscosity of 10.1 to 15000 cp at 25xc2x0 C. and the processing solution is supplied to the coating section at a supplying rate of 0.002 to 2.0 ml/sec, and at step (c), the developed photographic material has a processing solution-coating weight of 0.2 to 40 times a maximum water absorption amount of the photographic material;
3. An image formation process of a silver halide color photographic light sensitive material comprising a support having thereon at least one silver halide emulsion layer,
the process comprising the steps of:
(a) exposing the photographic material to light,
(b) coating a processing solution containing a color developing agent onto the emulsion layer side of the exposed photographic material in a coating section to perform development, while supplying the processing solution to the coating section, and
(c) reading image information from the developed photographic material by an image sensor to transform the read image information into digital image information,
wherein the processing solution has a viscosity of 10.1 to 15000 cp at 25xc2x0 C. and containing the color developing agent in an amount of 40 to 200 mmol/l, the processing solution being supplied to the coating section at a supplying rate of 0.002 to 2.0 ml/sec; the coating section is arranged apart from the photographic material so that a spacing between the coating section and the photographic material is maintained at 0.8 to 15 times a total dry layer thickness of the photographic material; and at step (c), the photographic material has a processing solution-coating weight of 0.2 to 40 times a maximum water absorption amount of the photographic material;
4. An image formation process of a silver halide color photographic light sensitive material comprising a support having thereon at least one silver halide emulsion layer,
the process comprising the steps of:
(a) exposing the photographic material to light,
(b) coating a processing solution containing a color developing agent onto the emulsion layer side of the exposed photographic material in a coating section to perform development, while supplying the processing solution to the coating section, and
(c) reading image information from the developed photographic material by an image sensor to transform the read image information into a digital image information,
wherein the processing solution has a viscosity of 10.1 to 15000 cp at 25xc2x0 C. and a pH of 10.3 to 14.0, and the processing solution being supplied to the coating section at a supplying rate of 0.002 to 2.0 ml/sec; and at step (c), the photographic material has a processing solution-coating weight of 0.2 to 40 times a maximum water absorption amount of the photographic material.